Author Book Talk – Jay Lewis Humphrey

Posted by bonnie on 10 February 2018

You are alone. Perhaps in a bar, a museum, a cafe, a grocery store—anywhere. You meet someone. And from the moment of eye contact, a story begins. 

In The Day You Love Me, you’ll travel to six places around the globe and experience six encounters, each fueled by hope and desire, each clouded by uncertainty. Whether in a Japanese village near Mt. Fuji, a small northern California town, an L.A. high school cafeteria, an art gallery in Tahiti, a bar in southern Spain, or in a Paris cafe, the meetings seem similar. The consequences are wildly different.

“A debut collection of short stories explores the complexities of love and passion.” —Kirkus Reviews

Read full review here.

Biography 
As a high school student, Jay Humphrey determined that one of his main goals in life was to seek a variety of experience. After graduating with a degree in English from Stanford, he went on to get—at various times and places—an M.A. in English, an M.A. in Drama, and a J.D. Jay interspersed his academic endeavors with international travels and pursued a varied career in theater and television, law, writing and teaching.

Jay has directed numerous plays, musicals and operas, and was a TV producer for King Broadcasting Company. He taught English Literature in Hawaii and Wisconsin, and ESL in Spain, and spent several years as a corporate manual writer. While a law student, he worked as a faculty research assistant, a law clerk, and a law review editor. He subsequently practiced law and worked as an editor on a book by a major San Francisco law firm. Eventually, Jay decided to return to his first love—teaching—and enjoyed a delightful career as an ESL teacher for a language school based at Dominican University in San Rafael, CA, where he was fortunate to make friends from around the world.

It hasn’t been a solo journey. Many years ago, Jay asked someone out for coffee. She said yes. Their own love story includes a son and daughter, two grandchildren and a rich and varied life in Northern California.

The Day You Love Me is his first collection of short stories. These stories are fiction, but as Albert Camus noted, fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth

Cover design by Eliza Frye. Book design by Jim Shubin.